At the core of the Open Lens Learning Journey is the belief that all layers of our identities are interconnected and create a very specific lived experience. Intersectionality, for us, is an approach to understanding and working with this diversity of diversity. 

Therefore, we decided for the theme of our first cycle to focus on exactly that. Together with our first external practitioner Heleneard Louw (he/his), the group will explore intersectionality and how it relates to discrimination and oppression, power and privilege, and the politics of identity within the different spaces we hold.

Helenard formerly worked for the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. As an intersectional pro-feminist researcher,  who is currently pursuing a PhD at Vrije University of Amsterdam, his area of work is the “construction, embodiment, performance and representation of masculinities and disability among the coloured racial identity in South Africa”. Having a background in Psychology, Organisational Psychology, and Gender Studies, he currently explores the intersection of race, disability, masculinity, and violence.